Middlemarch

An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially, and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now absent.


George Eliot, Middlemarch
1871

Another Country

"I'm beginning to think," she said, "that growing just means learning more and more about anguish. That poison becomes your diet -- you drink a little of it every day. Once you've seen it, you can't stop seeing it -- that's the trouble. And it can, it can" -- she passed her hand wearily over her brow again --"drive you mad." She walked away briefly, then returned to their corner. "You begin to see that you yourself, innocent, upright you, have contributed and do contribute to the misery of the world. Which will never end because we're what we are."

James Baldwin, Another Country
1960

Another Country

"I mean, I think you've got to be truthful about the life you have. Otherwise there's no possibility of achieving the life you want." He paused. "Or think you want."

"Or," said Vivaldo, after a moment, "the life you think you should want."

"The life you think you should want," said Eric, "is always the life that looks safest."


James Baldwin, Another Country
1960

Another Country

The trouble with a secret life is that it is very frequently a secret from the person who lives it and not at all a secret for the people he encounters. He encounters, because he must encounter, those people who se his secrecy before they see anything else, and who drag these secrets out of him; sometimes with the intention of using them against him, sometimes with more benevolent intent; but, whatever the intent, the moment is awful and the accumulating revelation is an unspeakable anguish. The aim of the dreamer, after all, is merely to go on dreaming and not to be molested by the world. His dreams are his protection against the world. But the aims of life are antithetical to those of the dreamer, and the teeth of the world are sharp.

James Baldwin, Another Country
1960

Another Country

At the same time, it occurred to him that the question was not really what he was going to "get" but how he was to discover his possibilities and become reconciled to them.


James Baldwin, Another Country
1960

Another Country

Perhaps such secrets, the secrets of everyone, were only expressed when the person laboriously dragged them into the light of the world, imposed them on the world, and made them a part of the world's experience. Without this effort, the secret place was merely a dungeon in which the person perished; without this effort, indeed, the entire world would be an uninhabitable darkness.

James Baldwin, Another Country
1960

Middlemarch

Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not wrought itself on the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling for all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.


George Eliot, Middlemarch
1871

Songs of Experience

Love seeketh not itself to please
Nor for itself to have any care
But for another gives its ease
And builds a heaven in hell's despair.

Love seeketh only self to please
To bind another to its delight
Joys in another's loss of ease
And builds a heaven in hell's despite.


William Blake, Songs of Experience
1794

Middlemarch

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us, and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts - not to hurt others.


George Eliot, Middlemarch
1871